Perfect Strangers
by hannnarivers
Summary: He wanted to know all about the girl with the veil of blonde hair, and the tanned legs, and the red beanie, the girl who was sitting on the balcony sipping wine. He wanted to discover her story, and maybe even write himself into it, if she would let him. Haleb AU, rated T/M. Twoshot.


**Ashley posted some photos on Instagram (the ones where she's in a denim jacket and a red beanie) and… things happened in my imagination.**

 **Enjoy the result… it may be ever so slightly graphic.**

* * *

Perfect Strangers

* * *

Never had one person been so captivated by a stranger.

She was admirably tanned and toned, judging by what little he could see of her; the upper portion of her body was rendered shapeless by a baggy denim jacket.

Her smooth legs were folded over one another, her feet perched upon the surface of a black garden chair, dotted with flecks of rust from its years out on the balcony.

Her platinum blonde hair fell over her shoulder in loose waves, shielding her face from his curious gaze.

He wanted to know what colour eyes she had.

He made a bet with himself that they were blue, bright blue.

A single puff of smoke blew past her veil of hair before she reached over to the table beside her and stubbed her cigarette out. Next to the ash tray was a larger-than-usual glass of wine – perhaps a little too large – which soon occupied the hand that had once been home to her roll-up.

He preferred red wine, but he could get on board with white.

Especially now that he'd seen the two full bottles of chardonnay, looking decidedly untouched beneath the chair that she was perched upon. He guessed that she must have put them there to shield them from the burning sun during the day, but now the sun was gone, and the wine still remained.

He could tell that she'd been there a while, because two more bottles, one empty and one almost so, lay on the ground beside her, carelessly strewn amongst fallen cigarette butts. He wondered if she did the same thing every night, or if some great tragedy that morning had broken something inside of her, prompted her to flood her senses with smoke and alcohol in a desperate attempt to numb herself.

It was hard to know everything about somebody when you'd only ever seen them through a glass door, obscured by a mass of blonde hair and darkness and the slight buzz of alcohol running through tired veins.

The only part of her silhouette with a definite outline was her red beanie, perched upon her head, standing out like a sore thumb against the dark backdrop provided by the night sky. He smiled to himself at the absurdity and distinct attractiveness of what she was wearing; had she been anywhere less humid than Puerto Rico in the midsummer heat, a denim jacket and beanie certainly wouldn't have sufficed at midnight. Was she even wearing a shirt under that jacket? Pants? _Underwear?_

He shook his head, clearing his mind of the thoughts that had been creeping into it, uninvited. Caleb Rivers didn't stare at half-naked girls; at least, not when they didn't know about it, not when they didn't want him to.

He wasn't sure of the latter yet, but maybe he could rectify his uncertainty with a conversation.

Much like Caleb didn't stare at girls, he also didn't talk to them a lot, especially ones that were staying in the same hostel as him on vacation. He mostly kept to himself, maybe in order to add a little mystery to his personality, maybe because he'd been burned in the past. That was why he had made the journey from Pennsylvania to Puerto Rico in the first place; to escape the sad air of loneliness that had surrounded him after he'd broken up with his girlfriend.

They'd been together for six years, six whole years, and then she'd cheated on him.

Maybe it was time to try something a little more impulsive.

He'd been in Puerto Rico for a month now, after all. His plan had originally been to travel for a week, maybe two, but soon two had stretched into three, and then four, and now he couldn't imagine himself going back home. He knew that he couldn't stay there forever, but he was allowing himself to believe that it was a possibility, that he didn't have family and friends and a job waiting for him back in Pennsylvania; that was if he still had a job, after taking a month-long break. His boss had said that it was fine, reassured him in numerous emails, but Caleb was almost sure that the company was preparing to render him jobless behind his back.

Not that he particularly cared; if he had no job, he had one less thing to go back for.

One more reason to stay.

He wondered if the girl in front of him was about to become another.

What was the best way to get her attention? He could simply walk out onto the balcony and greet her with one of his infamous smirks, or perhaps make a noise so that she would turn around and see him… but then maybe he would scare her, and that was the exact opposite of what he was aiming to do. Then, Caleb remembered that the balcony belonged to the hostel's common room, and not to the mysterious girl, and suddenly his fears were alleviated altogether.

It had felt like she had owned it, though. Her presence was enough to convince him of the fact that she held the entire universe in the palm of her hands, and he was still yet to hear her speak.

A newfound courage burning through his body, Caleb pressed his hand to the plastic handle of the sliding doors – it was cold, surprisingly so, considering the humidity. He heard himself swallow, before his fingers gripped a little tighter, and he made a soft jerking movement with his arm, just strong enough that the door slid open an inch or two. The moist, warm air of the outside world hit him immediately, along with the must of old cigarettes and the faint scent of subtle perfume that had been applied in a hurry long ago.

Her face was still turned away from him, her eyes presumably fixated on the cityscape that lay in front of her. He wondered if she liked the city, or if she preferred the countryside; he imagined that it was the former, not that he was one to stereotype based on appearance. As he mulled over which of the other chairs on the balcony he was going to situate himself upon, she reached into the pocket of her denim jacket and pulled out another cigarette.

Caleb decided on the chair to the girl's left; she had her back to it.

His feet barely made a sound on the dark tiles of the balcony as he made his way over to his chosen destination, the door clicking faintly in the background as it closed behind him. He smiled contently to himself, shuffling himself back onto the seat of the chair until he was comfortable; he was one step closer to discovering a little more about the girl on the balcony.

When he looked up, a small smirk still lingering on his lips, she was staring directly at him.

 _Shit. Why hadn't he planned what he was going to say to her?_

Slowly, her hand moved out towards him, another un-lit cigarette pinched between her thumb and forefinger. She nodded towards it, offering it to him without uttering a single word. Caleb considered not taking it for a moment, and faking the whole 'perfect guy' thing; most girls didn't like it when he smoked. But then, he figured, she wouldn't judge him. She couldn't, really – it would have been more than a little hypocritical. So he took the roll up from her with a small smile, holding it tentatively between his lips as she leaned towards him and set it alight with a pale pink lighter, the initials H.M. embossed on the front in a purposefully dulled gold.

He couldn't quite make out the colour of her eyes from where he was sitting; he was too far away from her once she'd settled back in her chair. In fact, most of her features were obscured by the dark shadows that streaked across her face, leaving only one stripe of lightly tanned skin across her left cheek for his eyes to devour.

As he exhaled the smoke from the first drag of his cigarette, he opened his mouth to say something, anything, he wasn't quite sure what.

But by the time that his brain had conjured up a sentence worthy of filling the air between them, she had already turned away, and all that Caleb could see again was her denim jacket, and that damn red beanie.

* * *

She rolled her eyes as she turned back to face the liberally illuminated cityscape.

 _Guys were so transparent_.

She'd sensed his presence even before he'd ambled onto the balcony, but she'd decided not to scare him off; not yet, anyway. She would see what he was about first.

The cigarette in her hand has almost burnt down to a stub by the time that she took another drag of it, the faint cloud of smoke that she blew off mingling with that of the man perched not-so-inconspicuously behind her. For a second, she considered starting up a conversation with him, but then she figured that she'd let him do the honours; after all, she had made the first move, so to speak. She usually waited for the guy to show interest first.

It took a while longer than she'd expected for it to happen, but it did, eventually.

"How long have you been out here, on the balcony?"

She scoffed; it was obvious how long she'd been out there. She wasn't making any attempt to hide the carnage around her feet. "A while," She mused, "Ten hours, maybe eleven. Enough to have had two bottles of wine and still feel relatively sober."

He chuckled behind her, and she smirked to herself. She had him wrapped around her little finger.

"So what're you doing in Puerto Rico?" She exhaled, stubbing her cigarette out, "Boys' holiday, or are you travelling to _find yourself_ ," She joked, mimicking half of the people from her high school, who'd travelled the world in search of some great spiritual experience.

"Neither," He announced, clearing his throat, "My girlfriend left me."

"Your girlfriend left you… here?" She raised her eyebrows, despite the fact that he couldn't see her face.

"Hah, no," He laughed, bitterly, "She left me at a bar in Philly, right by the ladies' restroom. Best night of my life," He joked, his voice trailing off towards the end of his sentence, so quiet that she wasn't even sure he'd said everything he wanted to.

She cleared her throat, unsure whether to brush it off with a sarcastic remark, or whether to offer him her sympathy. But she knew what it was like when you lost somebody that you loved, and so a simple 'I'm sorry' slipped from her lips just before her wine glass met them, and the lukewarm liquid began to trickle down her throat for the umpteenth time that day.

He didn't reply for a while; she hadn't expected him to.

"It's been a month, I'm over it."

"Have you been here since then?" She asked, deadpan, "For a month? That's a hell of a long time to run away for."

"I'm not running away, I told you, I'm over it," He retorted.

She rolled her eyes at that. "If you're over it, then why are you still here?"

"No reason to go home," He replied – she could almost hear him shrug. It was hard not to roll her eyes again at his whole sad-guy act, but something inside of her stopped her from doing so, perhaps an inkling that it may not have been an act after all.

"So why did she break up with you?" She probed, filling the awkward silence that lingered between them. She'd never liked silence; it allowed for too much time to think.

"What is this, twenty questions?" He sniggered, clearly unwilling to answer her question, "You still haven't told me why you're here."

Typical. He didn't want to give anything unless he got something in return.

"I lost my job," She started, her voice void of any inflection, "Three days ago. I held a powerful position in a powerful company and in the end I lost them about ten million. It was a stupid mistake and I paid for it…" She trailed off, inhaling deeply before she continued, "This trip was supposed to help me figure out what to do next."

"And have you come up with any ideas aside from chain smoking and binge drinking?"

 _So he'd gone with the sarcastic option._

"I figured they'd be enough," She shrugged, reaching out for her glass once more, partly to make a point, mostly because she felt almost stone-cold sober again. "You got any more questions to ask me? You still have a few more to go before you reach twenty."

"What's your name?" He hummed, his voice smooth – a little too smooth for her liking.

It was so simple, yet she hadn't been expecting it; she wasn't so sure that she wanted to answer it, either.

"Mine's Caleb, if that jogs your memory," He joked, presumably unsure as to why it seemed to be such a difficult question for her to answer.

She pursed her lips, not willing to give in quite yet. "Why would I tell you my name?" She could hear him pulling his chair closer to her as she spoke, though she wasn't quite sure why; he still wouldn't be able to see her face from his position behind her back.

"Why aren't you wearing any pants?"

She scoffed loudly at that – his second question had been even more unexpected than his first. She squinted her eyes, trying to muster up something witty to say in response to his rather crude, yet partially justified question; instead, all that she could think to tell him was the truth. "My clothes are in the washing machine and it's warm outside," She informed him, matter-of-factly, "Plus, I like this pair of panties. Don't you?"

She tried desperately to hold in a laugh at the thought of his eyes bulging out of his head behind her.

"I couldn't possibly make a judgement about that," He mumbled back, "I uh, I haven't seen them."

"You've seen enough to know that I'm not wearing any pants," She retorted, hoping that she wasn't overstepping any unspoken boundaries between the two of them. Not that she particularly cared; she didn't know the guy, and she was never going to see him again after that night.

She turned around to find him looking irrefutably flushed, something which she found to be oddly appealing at that moment in time, for reasons that she couldn't quite comprehend.

"I'm Hanna, by the way."

* * *

He'd been right.

Her eyes were blue, bright blue.

He had almost missed what she'd said because he was trying to capture the depth and complexity of their colouring, but then the realisation that she had just revealed her name and her face to him all at once had brought him right back to reality.

 _Hanna._

It fit her appearance, and her voice, and her personality. He didn't quite know how, but it did.

Now that he had shuffled his chair closer to her, she was near enough that he could see all of her features with ease. Her porcelain smooth skin, and perfectly structured button nose, and her full, heart-shaped lips that drew his eyes back down to them every time he tried to pull them away.

He dropped his cigarette onto the floor, stubbing the butt out with the heel of his left foot.

Hanna smiled, softly, knowingly, presumably enjoying his inability to break their eye contact.

"It suits you," He replied, simply, watching in fascination as she swung one of her legs over to the other side of the chair so that she was facing him completely, straddling the black piece of mental, her arms laying nonchalantly across the backrest.

"Yeah?" She smirked, "How's that?"

Caleb swallowed; he was finding it increasingly hard to formulate coherent replies now that he could see the full extent of her smooth, tanned legs, and those goddamn panties that she'd been talking about. They were red, to match her beanie. _Obviously_.

The top half of her body was still obscured by the backrest of the chair, but he was desperate to find out what else she was wearing underneath her denim jacket.

He felt himself twitch in his boxers at the thought.

"Do you… have an answer? Or are you just gonna stare at my legs?" Hanna mocked him, her voice laden with confidence.

"I'm, uh," Caleb laughed despite himself as he looked back up at her face, "I'm just gonna stare at your legs, apparently."

She bit her lip, pressing down on her feet and shuffling both herself and the chair forward a few inches, until her knees were touching his. Caleb took a deep breath in, closing his eyes for just a moment.

She knew exactly what she was doing to him.

* * *

Hanna could feel him shiver as her bare skin came into contact with his jean clad legs.

It wasn't cold outside, not in the slightest, so she knew that his chills were ones of anticipation.

She rubbed her lips together, her eyes scanning over the upper portion of his body. He was wearing a light grey t-shirt – not much to say about that – but his arms were something worth mentioning; they looked strong, strong enough to her lift up, and keep her off of the ground for at least ten minutes. Her lips pressed together a little more tightly until she could feel the blood rushing out of them, unable to stop the sinful thoughts that were clouding her already hazy mind.

She'd been single for a while now, her life consumed by her career, and her never-ending determination to be the best at whatever she did. She hadn't really had the time to think about men, let alone having a boyfriend; she'd almost forgotten how liberating it felt to swoon over a guy without restraint, to allow herself to indulge in her attraction without wondering where the situation was going, or what the aftermath would be.

Nobody knew her here, and she was almost certain that she'd never be returning.

"Did you see anybody else hanging around in the common room before you came out here?" She enquired, raising a perfectly manicured eyebrow; she studied Caleb's eyes carefully as they moved up from her lips, searching the sky for a few moments before he finally met her gaze.

He was trying to put himself back together after coming completely undone.

She could tell, she knew that look all too well.

* * *

Caleb swallowed hard as her eyes bored into his.

He'd heard what'd she'd said, but his brain hadn't processed it, not entirely. He was trying his best not to objectify her, but even the touch of her knees against his had set his mind racing off in a thousand different directions, all of which led to the same place, the same… outcome.

Her question, _right_. He needed to answer her question.

"Uh, no," He choked out, running his tongue across his bottom lip, "There was nobody else in there. It's pretty quiet in this place, I've only seen two other guys the whole time I've been here."

Hanna nodded slowly, presumably absorbing the new information. He couldn't help but notice that her eyes seemed to have come alive with excitement at his words, their bright blue colour somehow amplified by the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "Good," She murmured simply, tellingly.

And in that instant, Caleb knew that they were both on the same page.

She was waiting for him, he was sure.

In one quick move, he shuffled his chair forward until her legs were locked between his, their limbs alternating, pressing together tightly, every slight movement vibrating through both of their bodies. Their faces were only inches apart, and now he was close enough to look down and see the upper portion of her body; more smooth, tanned skin, that reached right from her neck to below her navel.

He'd been right, she wasn't wearing anything underneath that jacket.

He had to try hard not to voice his gratification as his eyes scanned over the deep valley between her breasts, which were hidden by panels of denim on either side of her body. He imagined what they would look like if he simply reached out, and moved the material further to the side. His fingers itched with a burning need to fulfil his wishes.

A slight jerk of her knee was all that was needed for the smooth skin of her leg to brush up against his jean clad crotch. His eyes shot up at the contact and he was met by her knowing smirk, teasing him, taunting him, challenging him as her chest began to rise and fall with increasing speed. Caleb shuffled on his seat slightly, creating a friction that almost prompted a moan to fall from between his lips. _Almost._ He liked to think that he still had some control over his own body, even if, deep down, he knew that he was lying to himself.

It was hard to define the word control when he was around Hanna.

Or restraint.

Or inhibition.

Painfully slowly, his hand slid across from its position on his knee to her bare leg. Her skin was warm, almost burning, and just as soft as he'd imagined it to be; it felt silky under the tips of his fingers, and he wanted to touch more of it, to feel every part of her under his palms. His other hand did the same, until both were resting upon her thighs, mindlessly working their way upwards until they touched the bottom edges of her jacket. His thumbs moved outwards, stroking the supple skin beneath them.

He had to try desperately hard to keep them where they were. But he didn't want to take advantage. He needed to know that she wanted this too.

A small moan escaping from between her lips as his fingers gripped her thighs just a little bit tighter was exactly what he needed.

And once that need had been met, all that he could think about was how those exact lips – the pair from which the most intoxicating sound he had ever bared witness to had just emanated – would feel against his own as he discovered exactly what was hiding underneath her denim jacket.

* * *

 **I don't even know, I kinda wrote this without knowing where it was going… and then it got so long that I'm splitting it into two parts, the second of which will be coming soon. I know it's maybe a little OOC, and the writing style is kinda different to my usual stuff, but yeah, I just had the urge to write something a little more out there. Hope you guys liked the first part, reviews are always appreciated if you did (or if you didn't)! Also, if you read my multi-chapters, pleaaaase let me know whether you'd like me to update Strings Attached or Safe Haven next x**


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